E-Learning for language courses
Apr 10, 2011
Hello everybody!
I'm new to this Community and E-learning, but after spending hours and more hours reading and watching all sort of tips and inspirational material I've just decided to try to develop my first E-Learning course. Hope I'll be able to do it with the information I've gathered from all these fantastic tutorials and, also, with a bit of your help! 
The thing is I'm an English Teacher. I teach English to Catalan/Spanish students. I focus my lessons on very practical content like negotiation skills, telephone English, socializing, etc as most of my students are managers or office workers. As you can imagine, these sort of courses need lots of contents and this is what makes me wonder how to present them in an E-Learning course.
To start with, I wanted to try a course about Presentations in English. I have the course perfectly written (lots of notes, audios, even vídeos), but have no idea about how to "convert" it into something engagig and motivating.
Should I make a different "course" about each topic (one about how to prepare a presentation, another about how to deal with questions, etc.) or should I make just one even if it ends up being really long? If so, should I work on the same scenario, using the same characters and background images or would it be better if I changed them? As you can see, I'm at lost. Any ideas to help this new E-learning enthusiast?
Eva
3 Replies
My suggestion on length would be NOT to make it long. Its easier to digest the info in smaller chunks. Also as far as character familiarity, people tend to begin to identify with characters the more they see them, especially if they are connected with particular storylines or concepts. I wouldn't use random characters for every lesson in a series if I can help it.
Eva, I agree with Robert. break your content up into smaller chunks. That will allow the learners to find what they are looking for more easily, if they need to refer back to the lesson. You can always embed links from one to all the others. As far as the characters go, as a former ESL teacher, I can see the value in having different characters, especially if you are using audio. It allows the learners to hear different pronunciations and accents. I also think variety adds interest. Perhaps you could introduce a core of characters in your first lesson, say a group of friends, co-workers or students. Then feature one or two of them in each storyline.
Hi Eva and those who are interested in creating stories for foreign language learning.
I just discovered this site : http://www.education.vic.gov.au/languagesonline/
where you can download FOR FREE the Cartoon story maker software tool.
It already contains some nice characters and background, and speechbubbles as well.
AND you can add your own backgrounds and images etc. It's amazing !
I would very much like to know how a story you create with this tool could be embedded in Presenter or even Quizmaker.
Best regards,
Marjolein
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